Implications of September 11 for the human rights regime

Civil Wars ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-53
Author(s):  
Daniel Warner
Author(s):  
Jessie G. Rumsey

Abstract This article empirically evaluates the comparative importance of human rights and counterterrorism during Senate subcommittee hearings on US foreign aid. Drawing on, and further developing, international regime theory, the article predicts that the human rights regime will be resilient to the September 11 shock to the international system. Qualitative content analysis of discourse during the seven years before and after the 9/11 attacks demonstrates the predominance of the human rights regime—even post-9/11, when the counterterrorism regime emerged as a competitor. The article explains why this is the case and offers insight to the human rights regime’s resilience.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Tiberiu Dragu ◽  
Yonatan Lupu

Abstract How will advances in digital technology affect the future of human rights and authoritarian rule? Media figures, public intellectuals, and scholars have debated this relationship for decades, with some arguing that new technologies facilitate mobilization against the state and others countering that the same technologies allow authoritarians to strengthen their grip on power. We address this issue by analyzing the first game-theoretic model that accounts for the dual effects of technology within the strategic context of preventive repression. Our game-theoretical analysis suggests that technological developments may not be detrimental to authoritarian control and may, in fact, strengthen authoritarian control by facilitating a wide range of human rights abuses. We show that technological innovation leads to greater levels of abuses to prevent opposition groups from mobilizing and increases the likelihood that authoritarians will succeed in preventing such mobilization. These results have broad implications for the human rights regime, democratization efforts, and the interpretation of recent declines in violent human rights abuses.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Sebastiaan Bierema

<p>The research presented here is an effort to interpret the discrepancy between the theoretical inalienability of human rights and the ease with which they are alienated in practice; a paradox Hannah Arendt regarded as the most conspicuous and cruel contradiction of human rights discourse. Proponents of the contemporary human rights regime have recognised that two principal characteristics of liberal human rights politics—namely, the double appellation of the Rights of Man and Citizen and an insistence on sovereignty and power-politics—directly contribute to this paradox. Nonetheless, they deem the current approach to combating rights violations to be ‘the best we can hope for’. After discussing this pragmatic liberal approach, this paper continues by analysing the alternative approaches championed by two republican traditions which criticise liberal human rights—Pettit’s neo-republicanism and Arendt’s participatory republicanism. The former of these proposes an institutional commitment to the rights of the citizen, whereas the latter deems the direct action of political subjects to be the most effective form of guaranteeing written rights in practice. Finally, in agreement with Arendt’s thought, this paper argues that while liberal power-politics and neo-republican institutionalism have their place in human rights politics, rights are at their most secure as expressions of autonomous action.</p>


2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-33
Author(s):  
Sundaresh MENON

Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, a line was crossed in the history of terrorism and political violence—many things we had until then taken for granted were lost. This paper analyzes the relationship between international terrorism and human rights and examines how these two concepts—which some suggest are antithetical—might appropriately be spoken of in the same breath even in the aftermath of those terrible attacks. The overarching thesis is that counter-terror efforts must be approached in a way that endeavours to achieve a positive relation to, and co-existence with, the system of human rights at both international and national levels. In this connection, Singapore's approach to counter-terrorism will be considered, providing food for thought on how far it achieves a balance between security and liberty.


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